Bibliophilia
by GoddessOfTechnology
Summary: Over the centuries, Jack has stockpiled a massive number of books as a way of coping with the loneliness. When the time comes to show his fellow Guardians his library, they are understanding, supportive, and even a little admiring, and he knows he can trust them to never damage his books...Until one day, he can't. (...Or, the one where Bunny screws up and Jack breaks down)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I have nothing to say.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own RotG. Also cover image is a picture by Gustave Dore and is in the public domain.  
**

* * *

The first time he held a book in his hands, there was no explosion of fireworks, no dramatic monologue, no sign that he had found the very thing that would later keep him sane for the next three centuries. On the contrary, at first sight the book appeared drab and dull indeed, with a simple brown cover that seemed hardly remarkable, the only clue as to its contents being the words "Gulliver's Travels" printed in gold lettering on the spine.

He opened it only out of pure curiosity, his expectations low. The object, whatever it was, had simply been left in a tree, after all, abandoned by its owner. It couldn't be that interesting, could it?

As a matter of fact, it could. He barely made his way through a couple of chapters before he was utterly captivated, and while the work was slightly wordy to his inexperienced mind, he found it wonderful just the same. He felt almost like he was a character in the story, watching what was happening as Gulliver endured shipwrecks and imprisonment and giant eagles and all manner of impossible adventures.

For the first time, as he read, he felt like he was a _part_ of something.

It took him several weeks to finish the work, for he was only a beginning reader, and the work was complex and verbose, but when he finally completed the read, he felt better than he'd ever had during his fourteen years of life. Somehow, the book had provided a comforting distraction from his loneliness, keeping his mind off his depression and solitude.

Right then and there, he decided he would keep the book for himself. No one else needed it, after all, and it had helped him. Perhaps it would help him again in the future.

Subconsciously, he hugged the tome to his thin and reedy chest. It wasn't quite as good as a friend, but it was a start.

(Meanwhile, in Scotland, a girl was sulking, still upset from the scolding she'd received from her father. She hadn't meant to lose the book, honest.)

(She was banned from the household library for the next three months, but Jack didn't need to know that)

* * *

The next book was just as fantastical as the first.

"Robinson Crusoe" it was called, about a man who was stranded on an island. He'd found the rust-red book in the ruins of a library that had suffered a terrible fire, reducing almost all the books within to ashes. "Robinson Crusoe" had survived, however, with only a scorch-mark or two marring the cover and the edges of some of the pages, and with no one else to do so, the winter spirit claimed it for himself.

He loved the book, he really did, but for some reason he felt a deeper connection with Crusoe than with the protagonist of "Gulliver's Travels". Somehow, Crusoe's situation, alone and fighting for survival in a world that cared not a wit for him, resonated stronger in Jack's soul than did Gulliver's unreal adventures.

He loved the two books, however, and just as he decided to keep "Gulliver's Travels", so he opted to keep "Robinson Crusoe," arming himself with one more weapon against the weight of the isolation.

* * *

By the time he acquired his third book, "Don Quixote," he decided he really needed a place to store his books. So far, he'd been carrying his small collection wherever he went, but if it was going to grow further, he needed a place to keep them.

He started out by storing them in a hollow in a tree trunk, close to the lake where he was born, and it served him well for a little while. After twenty or so years had passed, however, there was no more room for new novels, and he was forced to consider other options.

Like a cave.

He'd chosen the largest cave he could find that was close to the lake, a hollow in the ground that was hidden among the small hill of rocks that lay on the pond's edge. The grotto was both tall and wide, excellent for his purposes, and with a grin he gingerly laid his three books, his only worldly possessions, the closest thing he had to friends, on the ground.

* * *

Three centuries came and went, and over the years Jack's library grew ever larger and ever more elaborate. He watched humans do woodworking and used what he learned to make bookcases for his collection, his skills becoming more and more honed as he constructed bookcase after bookcase, until he ended up building twenty of the things, his first one rough and clumsily-made and his last one looking almost like the work of a professional, complete except for the little varnish which would have finished it but which he did not have.

Slips of paper glued to the shelves and scribbled on with ink served as labels, keeping his books flawlessly organized by author. Books in a variety of languages other than English were introduced to the fold as he learned more and more dialects. By the end of the year two thousand, he had a massive home for his volumes.

Books were not the only thing he kept there, however. As time passed, he also collected many trinkets and knick-knacks from his travels, so many that eventually he had to put his knowledge of woodworking towards constructing and mounting some loose shelves on the cave wall. A bed of a sort was soon to follow, a simple yet comfy nest on the ground put together from scraps of fabric he found.

Gradually, Jack's library also became Jack's home, of a sort. It was too empty to really be called a home, too gray, but it was the closest thing that he had to a home, surrounded as he was by things he could almost call friends.

He lived a life of 'almost', but almost was better than nothing, and was enough to keep him sane.

* * *

"That's...a lot of books."

He looked at the fairy nervously out the corner of his eye, watching her reaction, even as he forced a carefree tone into his voice. "Not that many. It's not much compared to North's library."

"Maybe not, but it's not bad fer a spirit who spent all his time alone, Snowflake," Bunny delicately brushed his paw against the spines of the books, noting with some surprise the concerned expression that Jack wore upon seeing someone touch his precious books. "Funny, I never pegged ya fer a reader myself."

Jack shrugged. "Well, you know me. Always filled with surprises..."

"Indeed," stated North as he looked at the books curiously. "Am wondering, where did you find all this? Books not easy to pick up off street, nor is paper, glue, or ink. And how did you make bookshelves?"

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "It wasn't that hard, to be honest, just took a long time. People trash or abandon perfectly useful things, especially nowadays, so the materials weren't hard to find. For the books, it was slower at first, because people didn't really discard them often, but I started collecting more when dime novels became popular, because they were cheap and I could pay for them with money I found off the street, you know? I didn't want to steal from people."

Sandy, who had been listening carefully to Jack's explanation, then created a sand image of a hammer, a bookcase, and a question mark, his inquiry clear. _How did you make the bookcases?_

"Those weren't terribly hard to make. I was good at woodworking in my past life, so some of that carried on to my spirit life via muscle memory, and the rest I got from watching human woodworkers. As for materials, there's a forest close by, and I got tools from a cabinet-making shop which was abandoned by its owner and left to rot. He left his tools behind."

"Impressive."

Jack shrugged again, voice nonchalant. "I had time."

There was an awkward and guilty silence at the mention of Jack's isolation, before Tooth suddenly flitted to one of the higher shelves, reaching for one of the books. "Wait, is that a first edition of "Gulliver's Travels"?"

"Yep, but be careful with it, it's almost three hundred years old."

Tooth heeded the warning, carefully extracting the book, before blinking confusedly as she stared at it. "...Are you sure? It looks like new."

"Pretty sure, yes."

"Huh," inquisitively, Tooth began examining the other books. "The others look new as well, but some of them were clearly published long ago..."

"Some of the older paperback ones especially ought ta be fallin' apart by now," added Bunny as he pored over one such book. "But they aren't."

"Strange," stated North as he grabbed one of the books. He frowned almost immediately afterwards, however, something about the book having caught his attention. "Jack...did you cast spell on books?"

Jack looked surprised and bemused. "No? At least, not that I'm aware of? I don't know much magic."

"Then I do not understand...unless..."

"Unless?"

"Well, sometimes a spirit's magic can leak into object, allowing object to be immune to tear and wear-"

"Wear and tear, North," corrected Bunny.

"Is what I said, no? Anyway, it can happen, but only if object has strong sentimental value to spirit."

"...Ah."

That...made sense. It would explain, after all, how his colonial clothes had lasted around two centuries. Heck, they probably were still usable even now, he'd replaced the vest and the cloak with the hoodie more out of preference than necessity, after all.

He was snapped out of his train of thought by Sandy tugging on his sleeve, the little man's eyes burning with a question. Once he was sure he had Jack's attention, the Sandman presented him with the pictograph of a book, followed by one of two books, followed by one of a whole pile of books, and finishing off with a question mark.

"Why did I start collecting books?"

A nod of confirmation.

Jack sighed, then, some of the light-heartedness seeping out of his countenance. He didn't really want to tell them, to be honest, but after all they did for him, he kind of owed it to them. The four Guardians had turned his world of 'almosts' into a more complete and fuller existence, had added the missing piece to the jigsaw puzzle of his life, and while it would still take him a while to get used to it and to be healed for good, while scars would always remain and darkness would always follow his footsteps, the fact remained that he was happier than he had been in a long, long time.

Besides, they were his friends. Wasn't that what friends did, talk to each other?

Taking a deep breath, he began. "It's not that interesting a story, really. A few years after my rebirth, I was bored and lonely, and looking for something to do. I happened across a book someone left behind—the very one you're holding right now, Tooth—and, because I was curious, I started to read it.

"It...it helped with the loneliness, kind of. It was a distraction of a sort, kept my mind off of things for a little while. Then I wanted to collect more books and things pretty much...snowballed from there. No pun intended, of course."

He smiled weakly, but no one returned his grin. Inhaling, he continued. "It kept me sane, to a certain extent. I could forget about the real world if I was in an imaginary one, you know?"

There was silence, and Jack looked away from the other Guardians, suddenly feeling ashamed of showing himself to be so vulnerable, so pathetic.

Seeing his friend's sudden consternation, North spoke up, voice solemn. "No, Jack. We do not know. We can never know fully what you have suffered."

The Cossack took a steadying breath, before continuing. "But we can help you now, my friend, and we will not abandon you again."

Jack was not expecting this, nor was he expecting the group hug North suddenly instigated, pulling all of the Guardians into one mass of warmth and friendship.

It didn't mean he didn't like it, however, and he felt his eyes tear up from happiness, both from the Cossack's words and from the hug which assured him for the hundredth time that no, the Guardians would never abandon him.

There, in the middle of his library, surrounded by his friends and his 'almost' friends, he realized that now his life was whole, and it would never be empty again.

And he cried.

* * *

 **A/N:** **"Gulliver's Travels" was published in 1726. "Robinson Crusoe" was published in 1719. "Don Quixote" was published in two volumes, one in 1605 and one in 1615. Assuming Jack rose from the lake in 1712, which seems to be the accepted date in this fandom, then fourteen years after his rebirth all three of those books would be in publication.**

 **Also, the reason humans never found Jack's stash of books was because his books were linked to him. When possessions (such as books, or trinkets, or even massive buildings or entire islands) are linked magically to a spirit, they become invisible to those who do not believe in said spirit, just like the spirit itself. This is why non-believers never notice Tooth's Palace, or North's Workshop, or the Isle of Sleepy Sands, or Bunny's Warren, even with satellite technology and things.**

 **...I'm tired.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Happy 2018, everyone.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own RotG.**

* * *

In Jack Frost's candid opinion, whoever truly thought that actions spoke louder than words was an idiot.

He could kind of see where they were coming from, though. Where the error had cropped up, why people believed in the lie and the mistake. To an inexperienced person, one unversed in the ways of the world, it would definitely seem like the saying was true.

Problem was, Jack was far from inexperienced. He knew pain better than he knew himself, having felt all kinds of it over the years, and he could say with confidence that nothing hurt more or longer than words. Physical wounds healed, skin knitting together, bruises fading, until there was little to nothing left to speak of the agony suffered. Words, however, were another matter, eating away at heart and soul for years upon years at a time, chipping away at self-confidence and sanity until the left only the broken shell of a person behind.

No. When used well, words were far, far worse than actions could ever be.

There was, after all, a reason he was in his current predicament.

The winter spirit huffed under his breath, the air from his lungs fogging in the cold atmosphere that was Antarctica. He liked Bunny, really, he did, but he was finding it hard to forgive the overgrown lagomorph. Looking back, the behavior of the rabbit seemed overly petty. Yes, it was true that he had accidentally frozen parts of the Warren, but it had been an _accident_. He really hadn't meant to do it, the cause of his misstep stemming both from his recent power spike due to increased belief, and his exhaustion due to the most recent winter season. Winter was always stressful, but this one had been especially so, for the Winter Court was critically understaffed and Mother Nature had ordained a particularly harsh winter that year.

Before he could explain his lapse in control, however, the Pooka had erupted, hurling invective at the younger spirit without letting Jack get a word in edgewise. The insults rapidly grew more and more obscene, from fairly harmless epithets to slander that questioned Jack's parentage, and with a steadily sinking heart the teen had simply smiled as he waited for Bunny's anger to wear out.

Until _it_ happened.

For all that Jack may seem flippant about such matters, the truth was that the issue of his race was a sensitive topic for the young spirit. For centuries, he had endured baseless derision on the part of other spirits, who snubbed him because of his race, who told him he would amount to nothing, his and his ilk's semi-wild and dangerous powers making them a liability and a threat. He had been turned away, betrayed, abandoned, merely because of something beyond his control.

When they had heard, the Guardians had promised never to hurt Jack that way. Wounds like that cut deep and never fully recovered, but at least he had trusted them to never aggravate the injury he cradled near his heart.

Now, however, Bunny had broken this trust, reopening the age-old gash and causing Jack's soul to bleed anew.

All it had taken was a few words.

 _"Ya'll never amount ta anything, ya irresponsible trickster! I should have expected this, all winter spirits are the same! Cruel, heartless, and flippant!"_

Jack was not heartless. He may hide his feelings away like a squirrel hiding acorns, but he wasn't heartless.

After all, if he were heartless, then his heart certainly wouldn't be breaking.

* * *

Bunny was...well, upset. Devastated. Livid. His emotions were currently a tangle of anger, remorse, regret, mourning, despair, self-hatred, and disappointment.

Anger at Jack, at the boundaries the winter spirit had unwittingly crossed. Remorse and regret at his own unwarranted reaction. Mourning and despair at the loss of his people, and hatred and disappointment towards himself.

It was just...Snowflake had chosen a bad day, was all. The thoughtless spirit had no clue why Bunny always kept himself sequestered in his den on these days, and he had no way of knowing. The Guardians simply took it for granted that no one bothered Bunny at this time of year, and no one had thought to inform Jack of the whys and the hows and the whens.

What Jack had done...hurt. Horribly, like a dagger twisting inside Bunny's chest. On any other day, he would have responded with snark and sarcasm, but today…

Today was special. On this day, many, many eons ago, Pitch Black had destroyed the entire Pooka race, leaving only one, E. Aster Bunnymund, behind. Though it had been a long time since that fateful day, it still hurt just as keenly as it had done so mere hours after the event. This kind of hurt and pain never truly faded, for though it may be occasionally muted or forgotten about, it would always come back to haunt Aster in the end. He would grieve the Pooka race for the rest of his days.

Today...today had been meant for mourning, and Jack had entered the equation at exactly the wrong time and in exactly the wrong way. When you are mourning the death of your people, you tend to have little patience for some frosted brat coming into your Warren and freezing everything.

That didn't excuse Bunny's behavior, however. He'd promised, along with the other Guardians, to never, ever deride Jack because of his race. Now, that promise was irrevocably broken, and along with memories of his deceased people, Bunny was now plagued with guilt at what he had done to the winter spirit that was one of his best friends.

He was an idiot. E. Aster Bunnymund, Guardian of Stupidity and Sticking One's Foot Into One's Mouth. MiM, had he bungled this up.

Hanging his head, the Pooka opened a tunnel at random and bounded through it.

He needed time to think.

* * *

He'd been wandering around in this forest for the past three hours, and had accomplished nothing.

The rabbit stared at one of the trees. It was a nice forest, very green, with splotches of pink or blue or violet or red or yellow from whatever flowers happened to be growing. He wasn't entirely sure, but he believed that he was currently in Austria.

He should come back here, sometime, when he felt a little less like bashing his furry head against a tree trunk. He could make quite a nice painting with this forest as an inspiration.

Sighing, the lagomorph sat down on a fallen tree trunk, fiddling nervously with his bandoleer as he thought. He would have to apologize to Jack, that was for sure, but right now he didn't trust himself to appropriately converse with the flighty spirit without making things worse. Grief, guilt, and rage was still messing with his head, and the Pooka had never been good with human emotions to start with.

Besides, once he heard the whole story, Jack would feel horribly guilty, and Bunny did _not_ want to open that particular can of worms. He wanted to make the frost spirit feel better, not _worse_.

The Pooka hissed under his breath in frustration. He wasn't _good_ at this 'feelings' stuff, for El-ahrairah's sake. He didn't know _how_ to handle these sorts of situations, especially when someone as damaged and scarred as Jack was involved.

Ha. Guardian of Hope indeed. What sort of Guardian was he, if he couldn't even make his closest friends feel better?

...If he couldn't make _Jack_ feel better?

So ensconced in such depressing thoughts was Bunny, that he almost didn't notice the figure coming though the trees towards him. The snap of a twig breaking underfoot was enough to alert him, however, and his head snapped up as he reached for one of his boomerangs.

Only for his hand to fall limp by his side.

"Oh, hello, Ostara."

The fellow Easter spirit smiled, her golden-green eyes sparkling. "Greetings, Bunnymund. Are you well?"

"...Tolerably. How are you and Freyja?"

"Doing well, I am glad to say. At times her close friends seem slightly disapproving of our union, but that is to be expected. The Norse gods are a proud lot, and doubtless they would prefer for Freyja to wed a male spirit."

Bunny nodded in understanding. To be honest, he had been surprised as anyone when the two had announced their engagement, but to each their own, he supposed. They definitely suited each other, both being goddesses of new life.

Ostara continued. "But you seem somewhat troubled, Bunnymund. Is all well?"

Bunny frowned, debating whether to tell her. Ostara and he, while both representing the same holiday, were not particularly close friends. On the other hand, he had to tell someone, and Ostara was as good a confidante as anyone.

Without being fully aware of it, he found himself spilling the tale, explaining how Jack had aggravated him (while carefully leaving out the part about the death of his species, he didn't share that kind of information with just _anyone_ ), how they had argued, how he had driven Jack away without a second's thought. Ostara listened patiently to his story, an unidentifiable emotion in her eyes, and when he finally finished, she spoke. "I...see. This is most grievous news, Bunnymund."

Bunny scoffed. "I think I managed ta figure that out on my own, Ostara."

"Indeed," by now, the goddess's eyes were filled with fire. "Pray, tell me, where does this Jack Frost live? I believe I might have a solution to your predicament."

Bunny blinked, surprised at the question. "Uh, well he does have a kind of home beside the lake near Burgess, Pennsylvania, but he doesn't really live there. It's mostly storage for his books."

"...Books?"

"Yep. Hundreds of them. The bugger's obsessed with them. Why do ya ask?"

"...No reason. Excuse me, Bunnymund, but I must be going. Until we meet again."

And then Bunny blinked, and Ostara was gone.

* * *

Jack was tired. Very, very tired. Rage-creating a blizzard in Antarctica tended to do that to you, after all, especially when you were already exhausted to start with.

Now, he was looking forward to simply collapsing in his nest in his library, possibly with a good book. He didn't want to see Bunny (or anyone really) quite yet, the insult still rankling, and for now all he wished for was solitude. Solitude and a book. The perfect combination when you were a bibliophile winter spirit with far too much time on your hands.

Night had fallen over Burgess during his absence, and Jack stifled a yawn as he flitted towards his cave. Not that the word 'cave' really gave it justice anymore, the place had expanded massively over the past four years, and now it was more of an underground palace than a cave. He blamed North and the man's ridiculous obsession with gifting Jack with as many books as he possibly could.

Still yawning, the winter spirit landed in front of the entrance to the cave. A faint tingle in his skin made itself felt as he ducked through the too-low doorway, the wards that North had insisted on placing humming with magic. It was a good idea on the Cossack's part, he would grant him that, but it seemed to him to be a tad unnecessary-

He stopped dead, and gaped.

Devastation, everywhere, as if a hurricane had turned the place upside down. Bookcases were overturned, smashed, destroyed, while his collection of trinkets had been dashed to the ground and tossed carelessly aside. His nest of cloth was ripped to shreds, bits of silk, cotton, wool, and linen lying about, and his makeshift shelves had been torn roughly from the wall and mangled.

The worst part, however, was the books. They had been utterly destroyed, pages ripped from their binding and left to trail on the floor like the broken feathers of dead birds. Some were burnt, only three pages and a pile of ashes remaining, while others had been damaged by water, soaked until the pages had crumbled into dampened flakes.

It was the desecration of a temple, and he could only spin in place, utterly speechless as he gazed upon the wreckage.

At last, his gaze fell on one book that had seemed to escape the carnage, left alone in a darkened corner. With three steps, he made his way towards the tome and gingerly picked it up, his fingers trembling as the words "Gulliver's Travels" winked at him in gold leaf.

Thank goodness one of them had survived. Thank goodness. At least there was still something left, at least he wasn't entirely alone-

His grip shifted, and the pages slipped out of the binding, falling limply to the ground and leaving him with nothing but the empty cover.

He stared. One, two, three seconds, almost transfigured by the sight of the broken _thing_ in his hands.

Destroyed. Crushed. Never to be fixed again.

As if in a trance, he thought he could smell the scent of spring.

* * *

 **A/N:** **Ostara is the Germanic goddess of Easter, while Freyja is the Norse goddess of love and new life. The Germanic peoples used to inhabit the regions that are now known as Luxembourg, Belgium, Northern France, Alsace, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany.**

 **Also, Ostara is a jerk and she should know better.**

 **...Thoughts?**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: FINALLY UPDATED! YAY!**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own RotG**

* * *

Deep within the recesses of North's workshop, inside the most private, most secluded of his personal offices, where the persistent roar of activity in the Workshop was muffled to a dull murmur by thick walls and a massive oaken door, the jolly Guardian of Wonder himself was working, carving a masterpiece from ice using nothing but his wit, his imagination, his sculpting tools, and centuries upon centuries of practice and experience, along with the obligatory dash of magic that helped give his artwork life and breath.

"Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya…"

He was singing as he worked, humming quietly a tune which was more of a mangled interpretation of the original song than a strictly accurate representation, and served to showcase his talent, or rather lack thereof, with regards to the more music-related forms of artwork. However, for all of the (numerous) shortcomings in his stunning terrible contributions to the world of music, he more than made up for it with his breathtaking sculptures, one of which was currently in the middle of the slow and painstaking process of creation, paper-thin shaves of ice peeling away from the gradually-forming sculpture with the aid of a delicate chisel as what was once a shapeless block of ice was meticulously molded into the form of a tiny, dainty ballerina.

"V sadu yagoda malinka, malinka moya..."

With a certainty and confidence that could only be born from years of honing his skills, the Cossack scrupulously and precisely etched the folds in the ballerina's tutu, the fingernails on her minuscule fingers, the strands of hair in her flowing mane, the microscopic eyelashes. With each scrape of the chisel, the ballerina seemed to become more and more alive, until the figure looked like it could start moving and breathing at any moment.

"Akh, pod sosnoyu, pod zelenoyu..."

He looked over it critically, nodding in satisfaction when his sharp eyesight failed to notice any defects in the flawless work of art. Bracing himself slightly, the Russian's beefy fingers tightened slightly around the diminutive ballerina, as he muttered a spell under his breath, a brief silvery glow appearing around the figurine before fading away into nothingness.

A moment passed, during which nothing happened, and the Guardian slumped noticeably, disappointment clear in his vivid blue gaze. Just when it appeared that he had lost hope, however, the ballerina suddenly twitched before leaping from his grasp and taking to the air, silver wisps of icy vapor whirling around the sculpture as it twirled and danced in midair and all around the room, looking more like some ephemeral, nebulous fairy than a mere lump of ice.

The former bandit king smiled, eyes shining with Wonder as he followed with his gaze the lithe movements of the frail ballerina-fairy. He had done it, he had created something marvelous, something beautiful, something that the children of the world would love with all their little hearts-

The door slammed open, catching the ballerina that unluckily happened to be in its way and crushing the brittle doll against the wall, smashing it irreparably into thousands of sharp, glittering pieces. Hours of work, gone in the blink of an eye.

North gaped momentarily, before abruptly glaring at the abashed yeti that was responsible for the destruction of his masterpiece. "Proklyatiye! How many times must I tell you to knock?"

The furry creature garbled an apology. North sighed, contemplating the hours of toil he would have to invest into creating a replacement ballerina. "Is not matter. No use sobbing over toppled milk. What do you want?"

The furry creature garbled an explanation.

"They are here, then?"

The furry creature garbled an affirmative. With a grunt, North heaved himself out of his chair and lumbered out of the room, boots stomping harshly against the hardwood floor as he began to make his way along the corridors and staircases that led to the meeting room. Accustomed as he was to navigating the complex labyrinth that was his Workshop, it did not take him long to reach his destination, a glitter-encrusted green door somewhere on the third floor, and with a mere twist of the door handle he was inside the room where the Guardians generally held their fortnightly meetings.

The first thing that he noticed was that the room was warm, too warm for it to be harboring the cold-loving Jack Frost. Indeed, as he examined the room, he realized that the teenager in question was missing, his normal spot at the window unoccupied, the windows and floorboards untouched by the frost that usually indicated his presence.

This was mildly unusual. For all his…slightly tarnished reputation, Jack actually took his new responsibilities as the Guardian of Fun quite seriously, always arriving at the meetings with a promptitude that had so far never wavered (except for the incident with the wendigos, and to be fair, the only thing that had kept Jack from showing up was that he'd nearly had his arm torn off by the creatures). For him to be over half-an-hour late was very out-of-character for him, and usually could only indicate that something drastic had happened to actively prevent their youngest member from attending.

Now somewhat worried, the Cossack turned to the three other occupants of the room, his comrades-in-arms, and asked. "Does anyone know where Jack is?"

To his dismay, three confused shakes of the head were his answer. Tooth's wings hummed as she inquired, "He's not with you, then?"

"No. I have not seen him for week. Is strange, he usually comes often for books, I do not know why he stopped," an idea came to mind, "have any of you seen him in past week?"

Sandy and Bunny shook their heads, as Tooth wrung her hands. "No, I haven't seen him at all, and Baby Tooth hasn't either. It's like he dropped off the face of the planet or something."

"Maybe he's restin' after the winter season? Bugger's always tired at this time o' year, usually he's crashed somewhere in Antarctica or somethin'."

"Is a little early for that, no, Bunny? Still some snowfall. Besides, he would have told us if he was going to miss meeting."

"...Do you think something bad might have happened to him?"

A somber silence fell over the room at Tooth's question, as each of them pondered her words. It was a very real possibility, as the only time Jack had missed a gathering without any warning was during the aforementioned incident with the wendigos, when Jack had nearly lost his arm to one of the cannibal's razor-sharp teeth, and had fainted from the resulting blood-loss. An experience that none of the four would like to repeat, and yet if Jack was in danger, they had to go help him.

But...if it turned out that there was nothing wrong, Jack would be irritated that they had tried to track him down, and that would drive a wedge between them and him. Jack valued his freedom, independence, and privacy highly, and he would not take well to the idea that the Guardians were likely to search for him for every little thing. He might look like a teenager in body, but he was not some child who needed a curfew and to be supervised at every moment, and he made sure to remind the Guardians of that fact at every available opportunity.

On the other hand, if something was the matter, than time would be of the essence. An unnecessary delay could mean Jack's injury and possibly demise.

Arriving at last at a decision, North spoke up. "One hour. We will wait one hour, my friends. If he has not arrived at meeting by then, we will look for him."

It was clear that none of them very particularly happy with his pronouncement, but they abided by his decision. All things considered, it seemed like the best compromise.

They could only hope that they would not, in the end, regret waiting.

* * *

Jamie Bennett was...pretty sure that his professors had to be breaking some laws, because there was no way that giving this much homework to a human being (and attaching to said homework a remarkably short deadline for completion) could possibly be legal in any sense of the word.

Although, in retrospect, it was probably his own fault for taking so many classes in the first place. True, there were many interesting subjects to explore, but he could have at least tried to spread them out more over four years, instead of attempting to do all of them at once. But, no, he had to act like he was somehow the Superman of taking college courses, and now he was paying for it with extreme sleep deprivation and possibly caffeine poisoning. Hell, he didn't even like coffee, but it was either drink it or fail absolutely everything, and Jaime didn't want to add 'flunked out of college due to a lack of decision-making skills' to his list of accomplishments.

Groaning, the eighteen-year-old stretched before reaching for a stack of papers, internally wincing at the sheer size of the pile. Psychology, while fascinating, was a nearly useless degree as far as potential careers were concerned, why on Earth had he decided to take it?

Oh. Yeah. Because Superman of college courses. Right.

Cursing himself for being an unmitigated idiot, Jamie began work on his term paper with no small amount of irritation. False memories, while an intriguing topic in the field of human cognition, were not an adequate replacement for that hazy ideal of sleeping longer than six hours at a time, and Jamie would really like to be taking a nap right now instead of writing an essay while half-dead. Alas, however, it was not to be, and all he could do was labor at the essay with no end in sight as he once, twice, thrice damned himself-

 _Thud._

Jamie Bennett stared at his dorm window, from whence the thud had came. There was nothing outside the pane of frosted glass, as far as he could see (not that frosted glass was particularly useful for seeing out of anyways), and after spending a moment contemplating whether he was having hallucinations from loss of sleep, he decided that it must have been a bird. A small ostrich, judging from the noise it had made at collision, but at any rate, a bird.

This hypothesis held true for around ten seconds, before a pale, pasty figure that looked more like a human than a bird appeared in the window and began scrabbling at the latch.

That was…way too big and lanky to be a bird.

Jamie Bennett stared at the _thing_ outside his window, and wondered vaguely why he wasn't yet running away from a scene which was rather reminiscent of something from a remarkably bad, remarkably bloody horror movie. The figure's movements were erratic and haphazard, and it kept making strange sobbing noises, like some kind of mournful ghost. It was, in other words, Jack Frost in the middle of a mental breakdown, and as Jamie watched his childhood friend slash older brother open the window and stumble into the room, all his could do was stare.

Jack looked utterly terrible. His gaze was wild and he seemed horribly out of it, stumbling like a newborn calf instead of walking with his usual, effortlessly graceful gait. His clothes were ruffled, his eyes were surrounded by concerning dark circles, his face was stained with dried tear tracks. He seemed to be shaking, lithe body shivering like a leaf in the wind, and all the while he was muttering under his breath, the distant look in his eyes clearly showing that he was only barely aware of what was going on around him.

Internally thanking whatever deities had ensured that his roommate would not be here for the evening (it would, after all, be difficult to explain why Jamie was talking to a person who was by all rights invisible), Jamie hesitantly tried to get the panicked winter spirit's attention. "Um, Jack?"

Jack didn't seem to hear him, continuing to mumble quietly, swaying on his feet as he stared at a point some several miles away. Now seriously concerned, Jamie abandoned his psychology paper and moved closer to Jack, in an attempt to at least hear what the spirit was saying and maybe figure out just what the hell was going on.

When he finally got close enough to make out Jack's words, they served only to worry and confuse him further.

"Gone, all gone, gone, gone, destroyed, broken, they're gone-"

"Jack?"

Jack ignored him. "None left, mutilated, ripped, burned, gone, gone, gone, gone, _gone-_ "

"Jack? What's gone? What are you talking about?"

A flicker of some kind of distant awareness appeared in Jack's cerulean eyes. "...Books. My books. They're gone, they're crushed, he did it, he destroyed them, he promised he wouldn't he _promised-_ "

A shiver of horror traveled up and down Jamie's spine. He knew about Jack's library (how couldn't he, after all Jack was practically some kind of older brother to him), and being a bit of a bibliophile himself, he could empathize with Jack's love of books. The desecration of the library would have completely shattered Jack, and indeed it seemed that it had, if Jack's distracted babbling was any indication.

Resisting the urge to strangle the person who had dared to do this to Jack and his books, Jamie attempted to pry more information from the winter spirit. "Jack, who did this? Who destroyed the books?"

"Gone, they're gone, he promised he wouldn't oh MiM he _promised-_ "

"Jack."

"Why did I ever listen to him nobody keep their promises _nobody-_ "

 _"Jack."_

"Three centuries of lies and I still don't learn-"

 _"Jack!"_

Finally, Jack shut up, although he still had a disturbingly blank look in his eyes. Taking a deep breath, Jamie took a moment to compose himself before speaking. "Jack. Look at me."

Slowly, robotically, Jack turned his head to Jamie, eyes seeing and yet not seeing.

"Jack," said Jamie, his words slow and measured. "Who did this?"

"...Bunny," said Jack, voice raspy like he'd been crying. "Bunny did it."

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **The song that North "sings" is a Russian song called "Kalinka".**

 **I looked it up, psychology is a fairly useless degree as far as potential careers are concerned. I'm too tired to explain exactly why, so look it up for yourselves if you're so interested. Google is a thing, people.**

 **Also, frosted windows are creepy af. Sure, they don't let people see inside, but imagine if a figure suddenly appeared in front of your frosted window and you couldn't see what it was...**

 **I know nothing about college life, so if I screwed anything up, let me know nicely please.**

 **See ya.**


End file.
